Regrets
by Molly4
Summary: Andy gets into a terrible accident, and he may never walk again. How does he cope without being Superjock? How do his relationships with his father and the other Breakfast Clubbers change? Read, find out, and review! Prologue up now, Chapter 1 soon!
1. Default Chapter

This another Andy-centric fic. Andy is hurt, hurt bad, so bad that he may never walk again. How does he deal?   
  
Rating: R, for some depressing stuff and mild language   
  
Disclaimers: Don't own it.  
  
A/N: This is going to be a pretty depressing story. This is just the prologue of a multiple chapter story. The chapters might be far in between so please bear with me. Please read and review, when you don't, I'm not encouraged to write more. *pout* Prologue mostly explains a quote from the movie, the other chapters begin right after the end of TBC, when Andy enters his dad's truck.  
  
  
  
Regrets (the temporary title, may be changed in the future)  
By: Molly  
  
  
//You know, sometimes........I wish my knee would give and I wouldn't be able to wrestle anymore. Then he'd forget about me.//  
  
  
Andy hadn't really meant that. It'd just been something he said in the heat of the moment, when all the rage inside of him boiled up and just exploded as he opened up his heart for the world to see. It wasn't something he did often. He never *really* talked with people. He'd never told anyone about all his pent up frustrations about wrestling, about his father, about how the goddamn world had been shoved on top of his shoulders when he wasn't looking. He didn't talk about that. He tried hard to not think about it.  
  
Sometimes though, when he let his guard down, it just spilled out. All the hate, all the anger, all the fear. Fear. It wasn't something he thought about a lot but fear was one of the things that was holding him back. He was afraid of himself, and afraid of his father. Andy was afraid of Andy, of who he truly was, of who he wanted to be so he went along with the idea that friends and family had planted into his mind of who he *should* be. Andy was afraid of his father. Afraid that his dad wouldn't care about him anymore if he didn't wrestle. Oh, sure, he said he'd like it if the guy just left him alone but there was the part of him, the bigger part of him, that liked it when his dad talked to him.  
  
Andy loved his dad, though sometimes he thought he didn't. Sometimes he thought he was the scum of the earth and anything was better than being his son. Then there were the other times which seemed so few to him. Times like when his muscles got sore, the first person there with an ice pack was dear old Dad, and his concerns seemed to be more about if he was in any pain than if he'd be able to wrestle. When he'd gotten the German measles that one summer, his dad was the one who helped him get to sleep at night, telling him stories about when he was in high school, and caring to Andy's every wish.  
  
The problem was, he didn't have the German measles, and his leg was just fine. So all his dad would care about was wrestling. Those were the times when Andy wished that he'd bust his knee and he couldn't wrestle anymore. Then his dad could get off his case and he could fade away into until he was invisible to his father and to the jocks.  
  
Andy knew he'd told them all with such passion that he'd love it if his knee would give, and at the time he'd believed it to. Believed that everything would be perfect if he could never wrestle again.   
  
Just thinking about it, moments after he said it, gave him a migraine. These terrible headaches had been coming frequently, almost blinding him with pain. It was stress the doctors said.....Would it affect his wrestling? Was all Mr. Clark had asked the doctor. Shit. All the pondering over that one sentence that he'd uttered that had stunned them all into silence, except Bender, always there with a wise crack. God, he wished he could be Bender. Just tell everything that was bugging him to just fuck off because he was going to smoke some dope. That would be great. Perfect. And he could just see the look on his father's face too, and hear the lectures rolling off his tongue, about respecting your father, and not taking drugs because it'll screw up any chance you have at a scholarship. B.S. Andy was beyond caring by now anyway.  
  
Those thoughts passed though, and came back to what he'd told the others. Would he like it if he could never wrestle again? What would it be like? Would his old friends, the other guys in the letterman jackets, would they shun him from their crowd because he couldn't play anymore? Sure, maybe they'd be sympathetic for a little while.....  
  
//Hey man, that sucks.//  
  
//Tough break Clark, but ya know man, we're always on your side.//  
  
  
But soon, other wrestlers would come and he'd be forgotten, just some guy limping through the halls.  
  
//Oh, yeah, Andy? He used to be this awesome wrestler, but then he got injured. He's a little weird now, acts kinda creepy. Walks funny too. I dunno. He used to be cool.//  
  
Andy sat in silence, wondering....."If it really happened, if my knee really got busted up, would I regret it?"  
  
Somehow he didn't think he wanted to know the answer.  
  
  
TBC 


	2. Feelings

Here is Chapter 1. Thanks for the feedback guys! It helps loads in the motivation department.  
  
Standard disclaimers apply.  
  
  
Chapter 1  
  
Andy slid into the passenger side of his father's truck. He hunched down low as he felt his father's hard stare.  
  
Mike Clark swiveled around in his seat trying to catch another glimpse of the girl he'd just seen his son kissing. A pretty girl from what he could see, but he couldn't let her distract Andy from wrestling. He had a future in the sport, and girls only got in the way, hogging his time, time that could be spent practicing and training.  
  
"Who was that?" Mike asked, looking at his son questioningly.   
  
"Allison," Andy muttered as if that was all the explanation he needed.   
  
"You'd better not let her get in the way of your scholarship..."  
  
"She won't," Andy cut in, his voice cold.  
  
"Good," Mike replied. He pulled out of the school parking lot. "We've had this talk before. Women are great. You can focus on women after you get the scholarship and even then, you gotta keep your head on wrestling. Or pick some girl who'll support you and not expect you to drop everything when she breaks a nail or something. You know what I'm saying, Andrew, right?"  
  
Andy stared at his father. He swallowed the lump in his throat. "Dad, why didn't you ever ask me why?" Before Mike could open his mouth, Andy cut him off. "You never asked me why I wanted to die."  
  
The silence seemed to stretch for eternity as realization dawned on Mike. So that's what he was asking. Maybe that was why he was being such a behavior case nowadays. Oh, if he thought the whole teenage depression thing was going to make him go easier on him he had another thing coming.  
  
Neither of them spoke. Andy considered opening the door and jumping out. Mike sighed, guessing he had to say something.  
  
"Suicide is for quitters Andrew. You're a Clark, you're not a quitter." Mike swallowed as he pulled into their driveway.  
  
"You didn't answer my question," Andy replied his voice laced with venom. "Dammit Dad, weren't you at least a little curious as to why I wanted to waste myself?" Andy shoved his wrists in front of his father's face. "You can't ignore it Dad. It happened."  
  
Mike turned to look at his son, who's eyes bore holes through his in a penetrating gaze. He didn't know what to say. Mike just sat there and stared.   
  
"Screw it," Andy mumbled. "Just screw it. Forget about it!" He jumped out of the truck and slammed the door. He ran up the steps, barged into the house, darting past his surprised mother, and up the stairs to his bedroom.  
  
"Andrew, you get back here!" His mother yelled after him.   
  
"Let him go," Mike mumbled, jamming his hands into his pockets as he entered the house and settled down on his favorite chair.   
  
"Mike, he's becoming a serious behavior problem!" Annie looked at her husband bewildered. Normally, Mike would be upstairs hollering at Andy in one big, long, shouting match between the two. She didn't like it much, but it got Andy to behave. "Somebody needs to discipline him," she added.  
  
"It's just a phase," Mike replied passively. "Some teen angst shit. It'll pass. Get me a beer, will ya Annie?" Mike quickly changed the topic.  
  
Annie clicked her tongue but brought him a beer.  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Andy thrust his head into his pillow. He could still hear Allison's words in his head, the words she'd whispered just before he'd left. "Talk to him," she's said in a voice so low Andy could barely hear her. "Talk to him. Make him listen."  
  
She knew. Somehow, Allison knew. She never said it outright but Andy just knew that she had him figured out. It was scary. Nobody had ever done that to him before. Known him. Stripped away all the layers of bullshit and gotten to the surface. Allison had done that to him. Come Monday, he knew what he would do. He'd stand up to his so-called friends. Andy only hoped he had the guts to do it.  
  
With a frustrated cry, Andy tore himself off his bed and slid into his desk chair. He ran a shaky hand through his hair with a heavy sigh. Flicking on his study lamp, he felt a familiar feeling pass over him. But it didn't matter, there was nothing around him that he could use to kill himself. After he'd gotten out of the hospital, Mike had gone and taken everything out of Andy's room that he could use to cut himself.   
  
Andy pulled out a ball point pen and a few sheets of paper. He had an essay to write, something that had been due Friday, but training had gotten in the way. The teacher had excused him, only because he was a jock and told him he could give it to her after the match on Sunday.  
  
Creative writing had been a class Andy and his jock buddies had taken to get out of regular english which would require a full year of reading and analyzing British literature. Creative writing was simple. You never got a bad grade as long as you tried. The teacher, Ms. Thomas, was really cool about things. She had told them the first day that writing was all about emotions and you couldn't grade a person's emotions, except of course with A's. Or the occasional B for those who didn't hand their work in.  
  
Ms. Thomas seemed to like Andy's writing. She did, but was always writing on his paper to put more emotion in it, to put himself in what he was writing and not be afraid of what someone else would think when reading it. Andy guessed he enjoyed writing. It was sorta cool. He got to just let go of all the shit and write. Maybe he could just ditch wrestling and become a writer. Andy snickered. 'Dad would just love that.'  
  
The week's topic was a feeling. Any kind of feeling, anger, hunger, ecstasy. Anything. Anything at all. The other jocks had taken advantage of that, writing essays about sex. No thanks.  
  
Andy sighed. Hmmmmmm.....what did he feel? Amazingly, nothing at the moment. He thought about the day. Saturday detention with four people completely and totally different from him, or so it had seemed. By the end of the day, after getting high for the first time, and watching all their protective shields crack, well he'd discovered the truth. And Andy had looked inside himself, past all the sporto shit and had finally come face to face with himself.   
  
Andy took a deep breath and began to write:  
  
'What I feel? Right now, I don't know how to feel. Because I've decided to stop following how other people tell me to think, and just be myself. I'm trying to shed my letterman jacket, lose my sporto image, and become me, plain and simple. So this feelings this is a little new to me. I'm not used to being myself.'  
  
  
  
TBC 


End file.
